


The Picture on the Box

by psychoroach



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Domestic, F/M, M/M, Multi, Objectification, Ogling, Shirtless Men, treehouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 04:31:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18045533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychoroach/pseuds/psychoroach
Summary: Booth, Wendell and Arastoo build things, and either grow close or grow closer to killing each other. Meanwhile Cam and Angela ogle them in secret.





	The Picture on the Box

**Author's Note:**

> I play fast and loose with any sort of canon in this fic, so don't go looking for it. Also there's some hilariously half-assed math going on, so don't think it's any kind of accurate. If anyone actually wants to figure out the math for me, I'd happily accept it, but otherwise just ignore it. 
> 
> Read, review, kudos.

Wendell Bray walked into the living room of the place he shared with Booth and Angela, seeing Booth greeting Arastoo as he got there for the work they were going to be doing that day. Angela had just left to go to the Jeffersonian and it felt far too early for him on what was supposed to be a day off.

"I hope you made coffee." He said, running his fingers through his shower damp hair, sitting down to put on some socks and shoes. 

"I did, it's in the kitchen." Booth promised, smiling at him in a fondly exasperated sort of way. 

"I brought tsoureki." Arastoo held up a bag. "Or in Iranian culture it's nan e gisu." 

Booth grabbed the bag while Wendell went to grab them some coffee and peeked into it. "Hey, I've seen this, it's also called Christ's bread, right?" 

"In some cultures, yes." Arastoo confirmed, walking with Booth to the kitchen where Booth got out a knife and started cutting it into pieces. "This is sweetened with milk, sugar, butter and flavored with orange zest. I get it from a bakery in the city, it's really good. Cam likes it for breakfast with some marmalade or honey on it. It's just as good plain though." 

"It smells incredible." Wendell looked more awake having downed half a cup of coffee and Arastoo grinned at him knowingly. Wendell pretended to scratch his cheek and flip him off. "So how did I get roped into doing all this with you guys today? What all are we doing even?" 

"We're doing the nursery for the baby here." Booth said, and Wendell grinned widely as he thought about Angela being pregnant. Michael Vincent and her daughter with Hodgins were like his and Booth's own children (as was Parker, Christine and Hank like children to Wendell), but Booth and Wendell were excited to have a child with Angela. Booth whacked him on the arm to get him out of his thoughts and smirked at him knowingly and went on. "Then we're going out in the backyard and putting up the Backyard Discovery Skyfort II Cedar Playset with the slide for Hank and Christine, then we're going over to Arastoo's and putting up a tree mansion for his and Cam's sons." 

"How old are they again?" Wendell asked.

Arastoo didn't even look offended by the question. "13, 14, and 16." He answered. 

"And what are their names?" Wendell asked.

Arastoo laughed then, shaking his head. "It's like you never listen to me at work." 

"I try, but you know Dr. Brennan, if you get too distracted, she doesn't like it." Wendell pointed out quickly. 

"Donovan, Isaac, and Samuel." Arastoo answered. "Samuel's the oldest, followed by Donovan, then Isaac. Fair warning, Samuel won't give a damn about the treehouse, he's more into video games and sports...girls...but Donovan and Isaac will probably get a few years out of it, then once they get tired of it, you can bring the kids over to use it." 

"Sounds great." Booth agreed. 

"So wait, why do we have to do this now?" Wendell asked.

"Because school lets out for summer vacation in two weeks." Booth said. "We need to have it done before then and since we're all off today, it's a good day to get it done. Call it a bonding day, manly men's work and shit." 

Wendell looked at him with a deadpan expression before rolling his eyes dramatically. Arastoo just muttered something about 'toxic masculinity' under his breath. 

After downing an entire two pots of coffee between them and the whole two loaves of nan e gisu, Booth led the way to the nursery room. Angela was going to be involved in the actual design of the nursery, but they were going to put up a few coats of paint on the walls because Angela couldn't be around paint since she was pregnant. They didn't know what the sex of the baby was, and Angela wanted to wait until it was born before she found out (a fact that she told both Wendell and Booth they had no say in, or as she put it 'no vagina, no opinion') so they'd picked out a color called Bora Bora Shore which was a soft blue-green color that they would build a nursery from when the sex was found out. It was actually a regular argument between Booth and Angela that Wendell tried to stay out of. Angela was in favor of a non-binary nursery, and Booth vehemently protested it (Wendell privately figured he just was hoping it would be a boy and he could make the nursery trucks and cars and such, or turn it into a mini soldier's paradise). 

"This is actually a really nice color." Arastoo said, after Booth had taken out the paint trays and poured it into it. 

"Yeah, we're really happy with it." Wendell agreed. "It's going to be a really nice base color for whatever gets done to the nursery once the baby arrives." 

They got to work soon after that, and it didn't take nearly as long as it would've if it had been just one of them. Arastoo taped off the area around the ceiling and down on the wood flooring and about two hours later they had three good coats up and Booth had the window open to air everything out so Angela could see it once she got home from the Jeffersonian. 

When it was finished, they took a bit of a break for bathroom and to have some water before they went out to the backyard where the playset was set out. It hadn't gotten too warm out yet, since it was barely 9 AM, which was good. The Backyard Discovery Skyfort II Cedar Playset was actually fairly intimidating looking. The bottom consisted of an almost bridge-like structure behind a mock rock wall that had circular green handholds that led up to the second floor of it which was a fairly large bare room that anything could be put in, that had a small ladder-like structure on one side that led to a crow's nest that had a green children's telescope attached to it. On one side of the structure was a set of monkey bars and a slide, and on the other side was a swing set. The box said the space needed was 22 feet by 16 feet by 12 feet.

Quite frankly, Wendell was a little jealous they didn't have anything like this when he was a kid. 

"Booth, are you insane?" Arastoo asked, when he saw the box the pieces came in, eyeing it skeptically.

"No. It won't be that bad, I have all the tools we need, and it's really not that many parts. We'll have it done in no time." Booth promised, full of confidence and a little bullheadedness. 

Wendell and Arastoo shared a look. 

A little while later they had all the pieces spread out over the yard and had all the screws and bolts accounted for as they tried to figure out what pieces to start with.

"I'm pretty sure it's these." Wendell said, gesturing to a few slats of wood. "They're the shortest of the pieces, so they're probably the flooring of the bottom part." 

"Are you sure?" Booth asked, looking them over. "They could be the sides of it." 

"There's too many pieces." Wendell shook his head. "The sides are those." He pointed to some other ones Arastoo had set aside that were of a similar size. 

Booth eyed them and then eyed the picture on the box. "Alright, yeah, let's go with that." He clapped his hands. "Ok so we have a start..." 

"Yeah. Here." Wendell thrust several pieces of the wood at him with a smirk and he picked up the tools Booth had brought out and they walked over to where Booth had mapped out where he wanted the structure to go and got started on building it.

An hour later, Booth glared down at them from the middle of the structure. "Ok that piece is definitely not going to hold four swing sets, plus the little...swing board things that come with it as well. We put a fucking wrong board somewhere..." 

"There's no way." Arastoo argued, looking up at him. "Maybe they're just snug..." 

Booth gave him a smart ass look. "Snug, sure, ok, yeah. Snug in a way where kids can play demolition swinging! Are you kidding me? Don't you have like nine degrees?" 

"I have one, one degree." Arastoo pointed at him. "I'm also a devout Muslim and you are _testing my patience!_ "

"Yeah well I'm Catholic, and you know what we're good at? Guilt." Booth smirked. "I will make you feel real guilty if my kids get hurt on this fucking thing!" 

"Hey now, let's not play whose religion is better leverage here." Wendell pinched the bridge of his nose. "Let's just find the right wood beam and get this finished." 

They went through everything and managed to find the right beam and replaced everything with minimal effort. After that, it only took another hour before it was all put up. 

"Ok, Bray, swing." Booth said, waving his hand at the swing set.

"Me? Why me?" Wendell asked, eyeing him.

"So we can figure out if they're going to hold before Christine and Hank get on it." Booth explained. "I'd rather you fell than them." 

Wendell scoffed. "Dude, fuck off, I survived cancer, I'm not being taken out by a swing set." He argued. He looked at Arastoo. "You do it, man." 

Arastoo looked at Booth, who held up his cell, which had a picture of Christine and Hank on it, a photo shoot he'd taken them to have so he could have pictures to pass around to people and Arastoo groaned, marching over to the swing set. He sat down on one of them and swung back and forth a bit, before he moved on to do the same with the others. Knowing where it was going, he marched around to the slide and, even though it was a tight fit and clearly not made for someone his size, he slid down it, and then looked at Booth who raised an eyebrow and pointed to the monkey bars.

"Oh you've got to be shitting me..." Arastoo groaned. "Dude, I'm sure it's fine, they're tiny, they won't have trouble with it." 

"You may as well do it, he won't let you out of it." Wendell pointed out. 

Arastoo flipped him off and went over to the monkey bars. He hoisted himself up (which wasn't that hard, he was almost as tall as them) and swung down the monkey bars, dropping off at the end. 

"Satisfied?" He asked, eyeing Booth.

Booth walked over and clapped him on the shoulder. "Very. Now come on, let's go make some sandwiches for lunch, and then we'll head over to your place and get started on that treehouse." 

They got to the house a little after one PM and Arastoo showed them the custom pieces he'd had made from a company and the design. 

"It's really just a matter of fitting it all together." Arastoo explained.

"Dude this is crazy!" Wendell exclaimed, looking at him incredulously. "This isn't a treehouse, it's like...the Shire in tree tops." 

"Don't speak nerd, Bray." Booth said, whacking him on the arm. 

"Don't be a jackass, Booth." Wendell whacked him back, not kowtowing to him trying to bulldoze over him like Dr. Brennan used to do when they were together. He shot Booth a look when Booth eyed him and Booth finally looked away at Arastoo.

"We can do it, the boys deserve something nice." He said, and both Wendell and Arastoo shared a look with each other and both smiled and nodded. "Do you have the rope for the bridge part, too?" 

"I do, have it all there." Arastoo pointed over to it.

"Well then let's get to work." Booth looked the plans over and chewed on his thumbnail. "All the boards are cut and shit?" 

"And numbered." Arastoo pointed to the numbers on the plans. "So all we have to do is...really just attach them and make sure they all fit together right and it's all anchored and secure." 

"What tree are you putting it in?" Wendell asked, looking around. There weren't a lot of trees in the backyard and even fewer that looked sturdy enough to hold a treehouse mansion thing. 

"It's free standing." Arastoo explained, gesturing to the diagram. "It has a bridge that goes up to it, that's about fifteen feet long, so the slope is..."

"75 degrees incline." Wendell said, making a face. "Dude, we need to make the ramp longer." 

"We don't have the wood for that." Arastoo pointed out. 

"I don't care, no one can walk up a 75 degree incline." Wendell replied easily, looking smug. "So you need more wood, the ramp needs to be at least 30 feet long, maybe even connect it to the back deck here, so the slope is doable. The incline then would only be about...45 degrees." 

"Thirty." Booth smirked when Arastoo and Wendell both stared at him.

Wendell did some quick mental math. "He's right." 

"Holy shit." Arastoo blurted out.

Booth rolled his eyes. "Fuck the both of you." He said simply. "So we need to get more wood. About how many pieces do you think we'll need?" 

"To go from a 75 degree slope to a thirty degree slope? At least 20 more boards." Wendell calculated.

"I guess we're going to Home Depot." Booth guessed.

Arastoo groaned. "Cam is going to kill me." 

Booth laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "She'll be fine once she sees how happy the boys are." He promised. 

Arastoo sent a sheepish text to Cam, who told him to get 'exactly what he needed and nothing more' and the three went to Home Depot. After a brief slightly heated debate, they managed to get enough wood for what they'd need and went back to Arastoo's backyard. It was in the heat of the day at that point and none of them especially wanted to be working outside in it, but they needed to get it done. 

Booth made them all put on sun screen and then he helped Arastoo measure and cut the boards up to the right size. Once they had all of that done, it was time to start building the ramp. They went with Wendell's suggestion of starting from the deck, which gave them a starting point. It was pretty easy to get it going, they just needed to make sure it stayed straight and all led to where Arastoo wanted the treehouse to end up (which was at the back of the property in the admittedly large yard). 

They got about half the ramp done and then stepped back to admire their work and make sure it was straight and the incline was going well. Booth had no idea so much math was involved in something like that, but he let Wendell and Arastoo measure and do calculations (most of them in their head, too!) and he sipped at a water and tried to look cool. The heat was getting to him so he stripped his shirt off before they were ready to get back to work and tossed it over to the side, uncaring where it landed since it was just an old Flyers shirt that was faded so much the logo on the front could only barely be recognized. 

"Ok it looks good." Wendell looked up and Booth smirked when he quickly looked him over. "We can get back to it now, we're going good."

"This thing is going to have rails, right?" Booth asked.

"Yeah we have the wood for it. We're going to use the scraps from what you and Arastoo cut." Wendell explained.

"Good enough for me." Booth shrugged, grabbing one of the pieces to put into place to get back to it. 

It only took them a couple more hours to get the ramp done and then they moved on to what Booth liked to call the porch of the house, which wrapped around it all the way. They took a small break to get more waters and go to the bathroom before they started on it and Booth got outside first and applied more sun screen while he was waiting. He looked up when Wendell came out, tossing his shirt off to the side and he repaid the favor of looking him over, slowly, deliberately. His smirk widened when Wendell flushed red and he silently offered him the sun screen to slather on, not wanting the pale skinned man to burn. Booth wasn't the most tan person ever, but he was also used to being in places like Afghanistan and didn't burn as easily. 

Arastoo came out and put a big cooler down nearby, stuffed with bottles of water so they didn't need to go back in and they started back up on the porch, getting back to wrapping it around where the main structure would be before filling in the main floor. 

They got to the last little bit, the main walls and the ceiling and Booth and Wendell went outside to put the walls up while Arastoo held them up from the inside. They managed about half of it before Arastoo called to them to wait a second. Booth frowned at Wendell and he shrugged to himself before something flew out of a hole that would be a window and Booth looked down to see what it was. He snickered when he saw it was Arastoo's shirt, and he silently offered him the sun screen.

"I don't burn." Arastoo scoffed, peeking out at him, his bare upper shoulders shiny with sweat, face flushed. 

"Humor me. Cam will flay me alive if you bitch the next few days because you got sunburnt." Booth said, waving the sun screen at him. Arastoo made a face but took it, half-assed putting some all over him before he handed it back and Booth stuck it back in his pocket. 

\----------

 

Angela looked over at Cam as they stood in the kitchen unabashedly watching the guys work, rubbing her stomach lightly. "How much longer do you think it'll take them before they get done?" 

"I don't foresee it getting done before nightfall." She admitted. "I'm glad the boys are staying over with friends tonight. With the language coming from out there, they'd definitely pick some things up." 

"Points to Arastoo for cursing in Farsi." Angela smirked. "Also points for those pecs and biceps as well..." 

Cam swatted her lightly. "Hey now, you have two of your own men out there, ogle them." 

Angela laughed. "You can't tell me you aren't ogling Booth and Wendell." 

Cam eyed her half in amusement. "I mean...I'm just a woman." 

Angela bumped her lightly with her hip. "Amen to that, sister." She and Cam pulled some chairs over to sit down so they could be comfortable while ogling the boys as they worked.


End file.
